


Orbis Non Sufficit

by ornithomancy



Category: XCOM (Video Games) & Related Fandoms
Genre: Background Relationships, Canon-Typical Violence, Dimension Travel, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-06
Updated: 2018-08-24
Packaged: 2019-05-31 23:23:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 17,655
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15129998
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ornithomancy/pseuds/ornithomancy
Summary: The Elders have taken her world, taken her parents, and nearly taken all of her hope. All Cecily has left is a knife, a pistol, and an ethereal that she desperately does not want. With any luck, she will be able to find somewhere safe to hide out, in her own timeline or otherwise.





	1. Stray Off The Straightforward Path

**Author's Note:**

> Crossposted to tumblr on [one-that-had-to.tumblr.com](https://one-that-had-to.tumblr.com/tagged/orbis-non-sufficit/chrono). This is a rather niche and self indulgent fic and involves a lot of work not posted on Ao3.

Screams reverberate in her head, a horrifying symphony in which she cannot differentiate between her own and her parents'. Cecily screams until her voice gives out or she blacks out, she is not entirely sure which happens first.

When she comes around again, she is tucked in a shadowy alleyway lined with cobblestones and not in a cell of the underwater base that she was expecting to see. It’s just as relieving as it is confusing. For the moment, though, for some unknown reason, she is _safe._ That is all that matters.

She allows herself to curl into a ball and sob. No amount of tears will reverse what has happened, no amount of tears will make her forget what she has seen, no amount of tears will bring her parents back. But she is hurt, and she is alone, and she is a _child,_ so no one can fault her for crying.

Once the sobs stop wracking her body, she sniffles and wipes the tears on the thin fabric of the sleeve of her sweater. She takes a deep breath and takes stock of her situation.

She is fifteen, armed with her father’s knife, her mother’s pistol, and their combined strength of will. That alone is enough to make her ADVENT’s most wanted, no matter where she goes.

The ethereal now residing in her head certainly does not help in that regards, either. In fact, it’s probably more of a reason for the bounty that is surely on her head than who her parents are.

She glances over herself next and finds she somehow doesn’t have any lingering wounds from her earlier capture. She can’t explain it, and she doesn’t want to _think_ about it, but she at least knows better than to question a stroke of good luck when it happens. Too much misfortune had occurred lately for her to risk it.

Cecily pushes herself to her feet and takes a better look at her surroundings. She finds herself completely surrounded by brink and stone and blue sky above her — not so much as a hint of alien architecture in sight.

Tentatively, she steps out onto the street to get a better look. People bustle past her, paying no mind to the disheveled and barefoot teen gawking around. She is not greeted with the sight of the harsh lines of an ADVENT city like that in her childhood, but a city like one she’d only heard about in stories.

She pauses briefly to make sure that her pistol and knife are hidden under the hem of her sweater, then steps out onto the street, trying to blend in as best she can. Despite her odd appearance, no one seems to glance twice at her. She lets herself follow the flow of everyone else on the sidewalk, desperately looking around for any indication of where she had ended up.

Cecily stops dead in her tracks when she gets to the nearest intersection.

A sign with an arrow points down one of the streets. _Prague Castle,_ it says in Czech.

It’s a bad idea, she realizes, but she turns down the street regardless. With the hint, she can start to pick out landmarks on the skyline, buildings she’d only heard of from _Tetička_ and _Strýc_ telling her stories of the way the world once was.

By the time she gets to Old Town Square, cast in the shadow of the castle, there is no denying it.

She is in Prague, somehow spared from the alien invasion.

Cecily takes off down a secluded street until she finds a spot where she can be alone and undisturbed. She slumps against the wall and allows herself to sob again with horrific shudders that wrack her body. Seeing _Maminka’s_ home, seeing _her_ home standing like it always should have been was supposed to be some idyllic dream. Seeing it like this — after everything that had happened — she couldn’t bear it.

She composes herself after a few minutes, once again wiping her tears away onto her sleeve. There is no good explanation for what has happened, for how she has ended up in this phantasmagorical version of Prague, but she knows well enough that she cannot draw any attention to herself. She sniffles, then steels herself and stands up straight, trying to emulate the way her parents always seemed to control any room they entered.

She takes a deep breath, then steps out onto the street. She holds her head high and attempts to belong in a place she so clearly does not. Her parents had never let an opportunity go to waste and she certainly wasn’t going to let this one escape her. If she were to have any success in whatever backwards world she was in, then she needed new clothes that wouldn’t leave her standing out like a sore thumb.

Though, she wasn’t exactly sure _how_ she’d manage to get them yet.

A multitude of options jump out at her as she wanders the city, but none of them appeal to her or her needs. Eventually she comes cross a shop geared towards outdoors wear and she can’t help a small sigh of relief.

Her plan doesn't sit well in her gut, but she only has one path forwards so she steps inside regardless. She hopes desperately that no one will come up to ask her what she’s doing, or if she needs help, or _anything._ Ideally, she hopes that she could pass through the store invisible, like a ghost.

By some stroke of luck, none of the clerks or other shoppers seem to notice her as she wanders the aisles. She grabs a basket and tosses anything that catches her eye into it. She doesn’t spend long in any one section, not even spending the time to find the perfect fitting pair of boots.

Once she has enough, she takes everything into a changing room and begins to tear all the tags off. She swaps out of her tattered old clothes and into the new ones. She pulls two pairs of socks on over her feel, then shoves the boots on, lacing them up tight.

She feels like a different person as she stands up from the bench. Looking in the mirror, she thinks she might _be_ a different person. Somehow, just a simple change of clothes had made her look older.

Their capture and the subsequent loss of her parents might have had more to do with it, but she refuses to acknowledge that as the cause.

Cecily turns her attention back to her pile of worn clothes on the bench, unsure of what to do. Her father’s sweater stares up at her from the top of the pile, drawing a twang of guilt from her heart. She unzips the bag she grabbed and shoves it in for safekeeping.

Content, she kicks the rest of her old clothes into a dusty corner under the bench, then collects herself once more. She leaves the changing room, once again hoping to be a ghost.

No one stops her as she leaves the store. Still, she holds her breath until she is a few blocks away. Then, and only then, does she let herself relax once more.

By some miracle, she has avoided all detection, all suspicion, though she does not feel at all good for it.

Still, she takes the luck while she has it, and decides to sight see. She starts by heading back to see Prague Castle and its guards, then wanders through as much of the city as she can on her way to Charles Bridge. She can’t recognize much, but what she does is just how _Maminka_ and _Tetička_ and _Strýc_ used to describe Prague. It’s beautiful and wonderful and amazing, but she cannot stop the horrible sinking feeling in her gut.

Her new clothes already begin to put in work as the sun sets and the chill starts sinking in. She pulls her coat a bit tighter around herself and crosses her arms over her chest to try and stave off the cold. She turns down a cosy looking street, hoping that she’d find someone willing to give her a warm meal or a spot to rest in out of the wind.

What she finds is simultaneously better and worse.

Light from a pub’s window fills the street with warmth. Cecily glances inside as she passes and nearly walks into a wall as she does a double take.

Her mother stands behind the bar, leaning against it as she chats with a few of her patrons. She recognizes Geist and a few of his Templars sitting in the corner being served by a young man. Betos sits at the bar peacefully having a drink and watching the others. Two seats away from her sits Volk, leaning over the bar himself and making a fool of himself, like usual. And beside him —

Her father sits at the bar as well, watching her mother work with nothing but admiration in his gaze.

Something twists in her gut and before she can dare acknowledge it — and before anyone in the pub can notice her — she takes off down the street. She runs until her feet hurt and then a bit further, and only then does she allow herself to collapse in a quiet park.

She covers her face with her hands, but no tears come.

After a few moments she looks up and around and spots a newspaper half pinned beneath a bench. She goes to grab it, though she doubts she will get any kind of answer from it.

In fact, she just gets more questions.

The date on the paper reads January 2016 and as far as she can tell all of the articles are entirely mundane. There is no mention of an alien invasion — past or present, no mention of any wide scale destruction, nothing to imply XCOM had ever existed at all.

She drops the paper and sits down on the bench, her head spinning as she tries to process everything. Somehow she hadn’t just ended up in a Prague that had been spared, but in an entire _world_ has been spared from destruction. And despite that, her parents had still found each other and fallen in love.

The thought is heartwarming, but she can’t quite believe it. There was no discernible reason why this world would have been spared while her own was destroyed — the entire thing felt more like a dream. She wants to believe that a dream wouldn’t leave her with such an inexplicable empty feeling in her gut, though.

She sits at the bench for a long while, catching her breath and letting her feet recover as much as she can. She knows she has to find a place to sleep and, supposing she doesn’t wake to find herself back in the underwater prison where she should be, she can continue her wandering in the morning.

An odd feeling stops her as she stands from the bench. Something pulls at her chest, pulling at the ethereal inside her. Her stomach flips at the sensation.

Something was coming, and it was coming for _her._

Cecily wastes no time in taking off at a brisk pace, still trying to blend in despite the terror taking root in her stomach. She makes twists and turns down the streets, but no matter what she does she cannot lose the feeling that something is following her — hunting her down. She pauses at the end off a long empty street and dares to look behind her.

Two men linger not far away from her, and while she cannot make out anything but their vague forms in the darkness, the ethereal within her practically screams at the sight of them. They notice that she notices them and start running at her.

She takes off as fast as she can down the street, her heart beating out of her chest in terror. She makes turns randomly, without any consideration for where they might lead, but her pursuers are always just behind her without fail. She chances another glance over her shoulder to check on them and runs directly out into an intersection.

The car hurtling right at her pulls her attention from her pursuers, but she freezes in its headlights.

She throws her arms up over her face to brace for the impact. The last thing she hears is the squeal of tire on pavement before the world falls away from under her.


	2. All The World's A Prison

There is nothing but the pounding of her heart in her chest and the rush of blood in her ears. No blaring car horn, no screeching tires, no  _impact._

Cecily tentatively lowers her arms just enough to peek out to see what happened. Instead of the car either crashed into something else to the side or having skid to a halt in front of her, she finds she is somewhere else entirely.

She drops her arms from her face and takes a closer look at the world around her. She still stands in the middle of an intersection, eerily similar to the one she'd just run into, and the buildings immediately around her seem just like those she had just been running past. Everything around her was dilapidated, though — almost like a ghost of the world that once was. Everything around her is covered with dust and grime and some kind of alien flora, just like world she grew up in. It leaves a sinking feeling in her gut.

Cecily takes a few steps forward to the nearest street sign, though it's old and faded. Despite its condition, she can still read the faint Czech words written on it, still pointing back towards Prague Castle. Her stomach turns as she stumbles back. Somehow she has stayed in Prague, but not one so lucky as to be spared from the invasion.

She draws her pistol and picks a direction to start walking in. The eerie city does not sit well with her, but if she knows anything about the abandoned parts of the old world, it is that by keeping quiet she will not draw the attention of the Lost that roam like aimless ghosts.

Of course, she knows it’s only a matter of time before she is found again. The Elders certainly wanted her back, and with their powers their goons would find her again quickly. With any luck she would find some answers before she had to deal with that, though.

She only spots a handful of Lost down a street as she wanders, and she hurries along before they can spot her. While she’s confident in her aim enough that they likely wouldn’t be a problem, she does not want to consider the implications. The Lost scared her enough when they were nothing more than zombies — horror stories that her parents had warned her of. Now, having seen what Prague was like _before,_ she wasn’t so sure she could face them down. Any one of the people she had passed by mere minutes ago could be one of the Lost haunting the city.

The thought makes her stomach flip again, and at last she understands why her parents had avoided the ruined cities as much as possible despite the safety they seemed to offer.

Absently she’s reminded of her mother's stories in an intrusive thought, of returning home to try and save her family during the invasion. Her heart catches in her throat and she stops that train of thought before it can even begin. As far as she is concerned, her grandparents passed away peacefully.

Wandering the city aimlessly does not lead her to much of anything — no answers, but at least no more questions either. The best she can assume is that somehow the ethereal forced upon her has brought her here out of panic to stay alive, without any consideration for their circumstances. Cecily tries to get it to bend to her will, to teleport her somewhere more useful, anywhere other than the middle of a city with so much heartbreak in its abandon. If anything could miraculously find her parents in a world destroyed like this, it's an ethereal, so she begs it to bring her to them.

Nothing happens.

Cecily swallows the lump starting to form in her throat and tries again. With any hope, the ethereal simply refuses to bring her back to an underwater prison instead of blatantly ignoring her. She urges the ethereal to go somewhere that she knows, one of the factions bases, a haven, the place her parents reunited — _anything._

Again, nothing happens. Not even the slightest swell of psionic energy.

She clips her pistol back to her pants and covers her face with her hands to give herself a moment. As much as she would like to collapse to the ground and cry once more, she knows the noise will only attract the Lost. She sniffles and wipes the few tears that have escaped away, and pushes forward to the edge of the city.

It takes a while, but eventually the buildings start to fall away to the advance of nature — if the mutated alien landscape could count as nature. The sight of it is hardly comforting, but it is at least something that she knows, something better than the skeleton of Prague.

Cecily steps into the woods and keeps going. It’s far from the best plan, but eventually she is sure she will run into a haven. At least, she hopes so.

She follows the river, assuming it would be her best lead to find other people, be it a haven or a faction encampment. As long as she finds _something_ before nightfall, she is certain everything will be okay.

The sun starts to set, and still she finds no sign of life.

Darkness slowly blankets the world. Just as she is about to lose all hope, a warm light flickers from between the trees — then another, and another.

She approaches on silent feet to see the someone going around lighting torches around the edges of a haven. She almost cries in relief, though she manages to stop herself before making a noise.

She realizes that perhaps she should have thought her plan through a bit more. Walking straight into the haven without a cover story seemed like a poor idea, to say the least.

She circles around the edge of the haven, trying to find a spot with no traffic that she could sneak into without being seen, something like she had been doing in the spared version of Prague. Instead, she finds something even more baffling.

Cecily takes a few steps into the haven towards the fire, just to be sure what she’s seeing is real. Two people who look just like her parents sit to one side, leaning against each other. She scrubs her hands over her eyes.

The two are still there when she looks again. The man is her father, of that she has no doubt. He looks just as she remembers when they first met — though more tired, like he’d had a few too many drinks in the previous years.

The woman beside him looks just like her mother, yes, but there is something _off_ about her. She wears a coat that looks like something more akin to what the Reapers would wear, and not something she’d ever seen in her possession.

She edges a bit closer to the duo, trying to overhear their conversation. They sound like her parents, at least, but they’re like versions that exist just to the side of the ones she knows.

Only when she gets close enough to hear her mother speak does it all click together. Her English is good, but it’s not the easy unaccented speech of a native speaker that she is used to hearing. Instead, she sounds more like Uncle Jaromír trying to speak English — monotone, fumbling, and always slightly uncomfortable sounding.

Her mother’s coat, she realizes simultaniously, she has just seen among the guards of Prague Castle, except her mother had torn off all the decorations, leaving just the navy blue wool and fur collar as the markers of her past.

This phantasmal of her mother was one that had somehow never fled to the United States, one that had joined the Czech army instead, and found a way to survive. It was the only explanation that made sense to her eyes.

Cecily’s heart stutters, unsure what to think.

Tentatively, she takes a step towards them. She has no plan, no idea of what she wants to say, no idea of what she _could_ say that would make any sense to them, but she feels the need to approach them regardless. If anyone could figure out what to do in her predicament, it was them.

Something grabs her arm and drags her back into the treeline before she can take another step. On instinct she goes for her knife but she cannot keep her balance and draw it while being dragged. She falls backwards onto the ground, only just preventing herself from hitting her head.

She raises her arms to defend herself from any attacks, then opens her eyes. What she finds leaves her dumbfounded.

“I thought I was too late, thank god,” the girl says. She leans against a tree to catch her breath for a second, then offers her hand to Cecily. “Sorry, didn’t mean to knock you down. Just couldn’t let you go any further.”

Cecily stares up at her in shock for a few long moments, then drops her hands. “Sally?” she asks incredulously.

The question seems to catch the girl off guard for a second before she realizes her mistake. “Yeah, it’s me. Bit of a long story, how I’m here,” she explains sheepishly.

She stares, mouth agawp at Sally as she takes her hand and hauls herself up, almost more confused about her than her parents. Sally — the Sally _she_ knew, at least — was supposed to be just barely younger than her, not five years older from the looks of it. Even worse, the ethereal inside of her vibrates in her presence, similar to how it reacted in the presence of the men chasing her earlier, but without the fear of capture. That, she was certain, was not a fate that the Sally she knew was heading towards.

It takes a few moments before she's gathered herself enough to speak again. “I just want to go talk to my parents,” Cecily says, dusting off her clothes and ensuring her knife was properly sheathed. “I just need —”

 _“No,”_ Sally says quickly, grabbing her arm once more. She tugs her back into the woods, away from the firelight and warmth of the haven. “We need to have a chat first.”

She tries to pull out of her friend’s grip, but Sally refuses to release her. Ultimately, she has no choice but to follow her into the darkness. She just hopes that her parents will still be awake by the time they’re done talking.

Sally brings them to a spot far enough from the haven that they can no longer hear their ambient chatter, no longer see the glow of fires and lanterns around the perimeter through the trees. She wonders, briefly, if the distance is for their safety or for that of the haven.

Finally Sally releases her death grip on her and collapses onto the ground at the base of a tree, making herself comfortable despite the apocalypse around them. Reluctantly, Cecily does the same, sitting on the ground a few feet from her. “Why the hell are you here?” she asks at last.

“Someone had to stop you from doing something dumb,” Sally replies matter-of-factly. She digs around in the pockets of her far too oversized coat for a moment and eventually pulls out a candy bar. She inspects it for a moment, then tosses it to her.

Cecily catches it easily and turns it over. The label is not one she recognizes, but it’s something very clearly straight from the pre-invasion world.

“If your dad is anything like the Centrals I know, that’s something he likes. You should try it,” Sally says, nodding at it.

She looks down at the candy bar again, then unwraps it and takes a bite. It’s good — horrifically sweet, but good. “Thanks,” she says. They sit in silence for a few moments while she eats. Sally procures another candy bar from another pocket of her coat and eats it herself.

When they’re done, Cecily stares at Sally for an awkward moment, still trying to piece everything that had happened together. “So, what do you mean, ‘stop me from doing something dumb’?” she asks.

Sally looks down at the ground between them for a moment. She fiddles with one hem of her coat, buying herself time to think her words over — clearly putting more thought into her words now than she had in her initial intervention. “I know you want to find your parents. I get it,” she starts quietly. She doesn’t look up to meet Cecily’s gaze as she speaks. “But this — this isn’t going to help. It’s just going to make things worse.”

“If anyone else can help me figure out what to do —”

“It’s not going to be them,” Sally interjects quickly. “You’ll spend more time explaining what happened, and then ADVENT will be right on top of you all again. Even if they can wrap their heads around your situation, they won’t be able to escape in time.”

The idea of nearly getting her parents captured again makes Cecily’s stomach turn. Briefly, she wishes she hadn’t eaten the candy bar so she wouldn’t have anything in her stomach to vomit, just in case. Regardless, she manages to push the queasiness back for the moment. “I don’t know what else to _do,_ though. I don’t know where I am, how I got here, how to _fix_ this,” she says. She draws her knees up to rest her chin on them and wraps her arms around her legs. “I just want my parents back,” she adds, her voice barely more than a whisper.

“I know,” Sally says quietly. “Losing parents sucks. But the Tanya and Central here — the ones you find anywhere, really — they aren’t your parents. I know they look like your parents, and they act like your parents, so you expect them to _be_ your parents. But they’re not. And when they’re not, it’s gonna hurt like nothing else. It’s like getting your heart ripped out.”

Cecily squeezes her eyes shut as tears start to well behind them. Sally’s words are true, no matter how much she wants to believe otherwise. If her mother had never left for the States when she was a child then she knows there’s no way her parents could have met before the invasion. No way she could exist in a timeline like this. Still, she does not want to give up all hope. “There has to be other places — other timelines where they’re close enough,” she manages after a few minutes. Her voice still wobbles as she tries not to burst into tears again. “I just have to find one of them.”

“No — Well, I mean, _maybe._ I guess I can’t speak out against just staying in an adjacent dimension,” Sally says. The corners of her mouth turn up into a weak grin, but it lasts only for a moment before reality drags them back down. “It’s still not really the same. I still wish I had my Central and my Lizzie and everyone else sometimes.” She pauses for a moment to curl in on herself, using her coat to defend herself from the bad memories like a child using a blanket to fend off the monsters in the dark. At last, she looks up at Cecily as she speaks again. “You should go back to your dimension.”

“I don’t have anywhere to go there,” Cecily admits quietly. “Even if I did, I don’t know how to _get_ there. I got here by accident.”

Sally perks up a bit at that and offers her a small smile, one of reckless childhood abandon like she’d seen the Sally she knows wear so many times before. Seeing it on her proves without a doubt in her mind that they are the same person, just cast into different but similarly unfortunate timelines.

“I can bring you back, dimension hopping’s easy. Will didn’t _teach_ me per se, but I figured it out quick enough. I’m sure you will, too,” she offers. She pushes herself to her feet quickly and steps over to help Cecily up again. “Once you’re back home, we can figure the rest out. I wonder what Dad’s —”

Sally freezes as Cecily is halfway to her feet again. She rights herself on her own, then looks at Sally’s face only to watch it fill with fear.

A heartbeat passes, then she feels it too.

“I thought we’d have more time. At least the haven’s safe,” Sally grumbles. “We need to run.”

They take off through the trees. Sally leads the way, but she moves aimlessly, picking directions without much consideration.

Cecily considers their options for a split second, then motions for Sally’s attention. “This way!” she shouts, making an abrupt turn towards Prague. “To the city!”

The ruined city likely wouldn’t offer them much in the way of shelter from the Elder’s hunting dogs, but the Lost might just buy them a little more time.

Sally follows without hesitation, easily catching up little lost ground and getting ahead of her once more. Without warning, she skids to a stop and grabs her arm to force her to a halt as well. Only then does Cecily sense the presence of something just ahead of them, coming from Prague and speeding towards them.

The realization washes over her quickly. “They must have started in the city,” Cecily mumbles, rubbing a hand over her face. “Shit — I didn’t think —”

“It’s fine, It was a good idea,” Sally assures her, giving her arm a gentle squeeze. “We just have to find another way out —”

Sally barely manages to finish her thought before a squad of ADVENT troops swarm out of the trees behind them, circling them to trap them. The presence of the other ethereals aren’t there yet, but they can tell that they’re fast approaching.

“Hang on!” Sally shouts. She grabs onto Cecily with both hands and holds her tight.

Cecily feels the whiz of bullets fly by just as the world disappears from under her again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sally is follyofyouth / trbl-will-find-me's daughter <3


	3. To Give Value To Survival

Cecily just barely manages to catch herself before she falls face first onto the ground. Sally helps, but she’s only just more stable than she is.

They right themselves and take a glance at their surroundings. The woods are still mutated by alien flora, but there is no skeletal city on the horizon like where they had just left.

More importantly, the sense impending doom of something hunting them down is wonderfully absent. For the moment, they are safe.

Sally releases her grip on Cecily and takes a step back to sigh and slump over slightly, apparently exhausted from their impromptu escape. She glances up at her once she’s steadied herself. “Is this your right dimension?” she asks. “If you reach out you should be able to tell.”

Cecily hesitates before trying to force the ethereal to comply. She presses it to reach out and give her any indication at all of where and when they were.

It obeys reluctantly, and her stomach twists with a mixture of horror and relief.

“It’s not,” she says after a moment, keeping her voice evenly tempered. “It feels closer to where we just were — like I’m not supposed to be here.” She didn't like what she had found before, but any timeline was better than the one she was from.

“Well, shit,” Sally sighs. She takes a moment to pace in a circle, hands atop her head, thinking. “I need some time to rest, so we might as well see where we ended up, right?”

Cecily hesitates for a moment, then nods. “Sure. Any idea where to go, though? I don’t recognize where we are.”

Sally stops and Cecily can sense her ethereal reach out like hers had. It’s different, though. It feels more natural, more like Sally and her ethereal were one creature working in harmony. Each are the extension of the other — the line between Sally and ethereal thin and barely existent.

She hopes she does not become quite so familiar with hers.

Sally’s expression changes from pensive curiosity to confusion after just mere seconds. Before she can ask what’s wrong, Sally drops her hands to her side and turns east.

“This way,” she says. “I want to see something.”

Sally starts off without waiting to see if Cecily follows. She does, of course, but not without a furrow in her brow. She nudges the ethereal again, just to be sure that they were safe, to try and pick up on whatever it was that Sally had found, but it either refuses to budge or simply picks up on nothing at all.

She tries for a few minutes while they walk, but nothing happens. Eventually she sighs quietly and gives in. She trusts her friend — even this strange alternate version of her friend, but she is terrified walking straight into danger again. “Why this way?” she asks reluctantly.

“Can’t you feel it?” Sally retorts.

“Feel _what?”_

Sally comes to a stop to turn and face her. She looks almost as though she’s about to lecture her, but once Sally sees her look of confusion she drops it for something softer, more understanding. “You have an ethereal, right? Can’t you feel all the others?” she asks.

Cecily shakes her head minutely. A lump starts to form in her throat, but she does her best to swallow it down and be strong. “I don’t want it. It doesn’t seem to want to cooperate most of the time, either, it seems,” she explains quietly.

Sally stares at her for a long moment before her words click. “Oh,” she says a bit awkwardly. “It’ll come with time. If you’re anything like Tanya, you won’t have any problem controlling it.” She reaches out to give her arm a comforting squeeze, but it cannot replace what has been lost. “But you really can’t sense Will?”

“Who?”

 _“Will!”_  She says again, not explaining anything. 

Cecily does not press for more information, unsure she’d get an actual answer.

“Maybe I’m just sensitive to his presence,” Sally muses to herself without seeing if Cecily tried to clarify further or not. She turns and motions for Cecily to follow.

They continue traipsing through the woods for a while, Sally doing her best to keep chattering. Cecily doesn’t input much, but she appreciates having the distraction from her situation, however momentary it is.

Sally falls silent with an almost unnatural speed. Cecily tenses and her hand twitches towards her pistol. If she pushes the ethereal, she can feel _something_ just beyond them. Not something dangerous — at least, not something dangerous _to them._ In fact, the more she grew accustomed to the other ethereal, the more like Sally it seemed.

She looks to her, but any reaction to their similarity does not cross her face.

“Come on,” Sally says lowly, motioning for her to follow again. They circle around and quickly find a small river of space between the trees. Four figures walk down the clearing in a line. She and Sally quickly dive behind a bush as to not be seen. Sally motions for her to be quiet, not that she needed to be told twice.

The four people keep walking along, apparently trying to scout the area but far too caught up in their conversation to do so. At least, they did not pay any mind to the two of them, and that is all she cares about as they approach.

Cecily does not need to look beyond the deep blue coat her mother wears to confirm what she already knew. This was not a timeline where she belonged.

Still, she watches her regardless as she nudges a familiar looking woman beside her with her elbow. The woman looks up at the tall man on her other side to say something that she cannot make out. She can see her father say something in reply, though.

Whatever is being said between the four of them, they look _happy._ Even if she could interrupt and explain her situation to them — which she is sure Sally would not let her do regardless — she’s not sure she would want to risk taking their smiles away. No one smiled so much in her own timeline.

Sally rests a hand on her shoulder to try and be comforting, as if able to sense the dip in her mood. “At least we know there’s one dimension they’re all happy?” she offers quietly. “I mean, even Will’s smiling — I don’t see him do that often.”

Cecily nods weakly, trying to take comfort in the knowledge despite her own disappointments. Her parents and their friends are happy. Nothing else beyond that really matters.

She glances over the four again as they near them, trying to discern where the two that seem familiar come from. The tall man’s name seems to sit at the tip of her tongue, though Sally calling him ‘Will’ did not ring any bells. She stares at him for a long moment before it clicks. “Wait, you know Billiam?” she asks incredulously.

Her words take a moment to process in Sally’s mind, but once they do she snaps her attention to her, her ponytail whipping around with the action. Her expression is a mixture of surprise and utter devious glee. _“Billiam?”_ she asks, a bit too loudly to be inconspicuous. “He’s called _Billiam_ in your dimension?”

“Eliza always referred to him as ‘Uncle Billiam’.”

The glee builds in Sally’s expression, her eyes growing wider as the knowledge sets in. The dam breaks after a beat and Sally lets loose a single high pitched laugh before she manages to slap her hands over her mouth.

Cecily glances over at the four adults to find that they’ve stopped to glance at the woods around them, apparently looking for the source of the noise. Fear tightens in her gut as the familiar looking woman seems to stare right at them.

Her heart pounds out of her chest. Sally almost silently losing her mind beside her does not help.

Her savior comes instead in the shape of a man running towards the four adults. He hurriedly explains something to them, animated yet out of breath. If she strains to listen, she thinks she hears the name ADVENT thrown around a few times. The reactions of the adults only confirm her fears as all their smiles drop and they reach for their weapons.

The man turns on his heel and starts sprinting back towards the direction he came from with the adults hurrying after him. The woman is the last to take off, throwing one last look in their direction before following her friends.

As soon as she disappears back into the foliage Cecily sighs in relief, only to remember that ADVENT is still nearby and, most likely, looking for her. She looks down at Sally, still silently laughing on the ground.

“Is it really that funny?”

Sally needs a few moments to breathe before she can reply, and even then she can still barely contain herself. “It is,” she assures.

Cecily sighs and reaches down to haul Sally to her feet once more. “Come on. ADVENT’s coming, we need to get out of here, and the ethereal isn’t going to help me so someone else has to,” she says, her voice tightening the more she speaks as she holds off another round of sobs.

As much as she despises the sound of it, the change in demeanor is enough to bring Sally back to her senses. She finally manages to throw off the last of her giggle fit and focus on the task at hand. She rubs her hands over her face and just like that she looks like a serious adult again — or as close as she can get. “Alright,” she says at last. “We should try to get a little distance on ADVENT while we can.”

Cecily nods and takes the lead, heading in the opposite direction that the others had gone in. In the distance, just faintly, she can feel the presence of another ethereal. It’s distinct from the one that Billiam had, which had already faded from her mind, and almost certainly one that had been hunting her down. It sets her nerves on edge, but either Sally’s laughter or seeing her parents and their friends happy gives her enough comfort to keep herself steady for the moment.

Sally stays quiet for a little bit while they hurry through the trees. When she speaks up, it’s with a quiet care that doesn’t come quite so naturally. “I know you don’t want the ethereal — I don’t know how you got it and I won’t ask — so I know seeing it as an ally probably isn’t what you want to hear,” she starts softly. “But it’s true. And if you can’t get there, at least see it as a tool. There isn’t anything more useful than an ethereal when fighting other ethereals.”

Cecily looks up at Sally a bit apprehensively. “But I don’t know how to _use_ it,” she retorts. “It’s like it wants to sabotage me.”

Sally reaches out to grab her shoulder again, clearly needing a second to find the right words to say. Before she can find them, though, they walk right into an ADVENT patrol, startling all of them. The troopers jump back and fumble for their weapons.

“Shit!” Sally gasps. The hand on Cecily’s shoulder tightens and she pulls her along to run away.

They don’t get far before the presence of the ethereal becomes overpowering and unignorable, apparently alerted by the surprise of the patrol.

Sally stops and pushes Cecily a bit further along when she stops, too. “Keep going, I’ll make a distraction for you,” she orders.

Cecily shakes her head and reaches out to grab Sally’s hand. “You can’t take them all on, I can’t just leave you —”

“Cess, I’ll be _fine,_ it’s not my first time dealing with ADVENT,” she assures quickly. When Cecily doesn’t move she waves her hands at her. “Go! You don’t have much time!”

She hates it, she hates losing someone else when she’s already so alone, but Cecily turns and runs. Tears prick at her eyes despite her attempts to ignore her feelings.

“Don’t be afraid!” Sally shouts after her. “Focus on what you want and push the ethereal!”

Alien shouting covers up anything more of what Sally yells at her. She does her best to ignore the horrific sounds and keep running.

She cannot run until the sounds are inaudible, but she still runs until they are a fair distance away before finally slowing down. She does not stop completely, not when she knows she is still being hunted. She doubts Sally can hold off ADVENT for long on her own and she will not let her friend’s efforts go to waste.

“Focus on what I want,” she mumbles to herself. She clenches her hands into fists and tries not to cry at the thought. She wants her family back — in whatever form she can get it. She focuses on that idea and shoves the ethereal with all the force of will she can muster.

She is not prepared when the world vanishes from under her feet again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sally is still follyofyouth/trbl-will-find-me's


	4. With a Loving Heart

Cecily is not quite sure which is turning more — the world newly reappeared under her feet or her stomach. Regardless, she stumbles back over to a rotting wall and collapses at the base of it to try to piece herself back together. It takes a few minutes, but eventually her heart stops pounding and she can breathe again.

Her first few jumps hadn’t left her feeling so terrible, but perhaps the ethereal was revolting for finally being forced to bend to her will. She hopes that is not the case as she is sure they still have an unfortunate amount of time together.

Once she’s regained her composure somewhat, she presses at the ethereal again, despite her sickness. It might just be her imagination, but she thinks it gives in just a hair easier than before, perhaps just as tired as she was from the constant jumping. They reach out and feel — nothing. For the moment, at least, she is safe.

Still, there is something about being here that is slightly off. The world seems to exist just to the side of where it should — rather, _she_ exists just to the side in this timeline. It feels closer than the last ones she had been in, but it still wasn’t _right._

Something twists in her gut, and she hopes it is because of the ethereal again.

She sits for a few minutes longer to try and figure out a plan. The ethereal has once again dumped her in a place she does not recognize with no indication of just where she needs to go. Still, she wants to explore, despite the odd feeling, despite knowing she almost certainly will not find what she wants here.

As much as she would like to, she cannot sit for long, no matter how badly she feels. She picks herself up again and presses the ethereal for something — _anything_ useful.

It gives her a direction and nothing else. Still, it is a lead, and so she sets off.

After a little while of hiking, the trees thin out and shortly ahead she spots the edge of a haven with its telltale collage of buildings. It’s a fairly large haven by her estimate, so she thinks of a story quick and crosses the field to enter and join them. At the very least, she could do with a warm meal and a place to rest for a while.

Fortunately, someone in the haven speaks English, so she is able to explain her situation — that she’s just escaped, that her family’s gone, that she has nowhere else to go. None of what she says is a lie, but she omits all the important details. The tears, while unintentional, ensure that no one presses her for more information than necessary. She hates allowing herself to be so exposed, so vulnerable, but it stops anyone from poking at the holes in her story.

She gets set up next to a fire with a blanket and a meal. She scarfs down the the food quickly, not realizing just how hungry she’d become. There had been too much adventure, and she isn't even sure if it had been days since her parents were taken, or just hours.

In truth, she’d rather not know.

Cecily sets the bowl down on the ground beside her and pulls the blanket tight around herself. She stares at the fire with her arms wrapped around her legs, trying to figure out what to do next. Ideally, she’d like to stay with the haven for a bit to give herself time to recuperate, but she knows it’s only a matter of time before ADVENT will appear. The people here had already shown her so much kindness despite knowing her only minutes, and they certainly did not deserve to be killed because of her. It wasn't as though she had any better plan.

Almost as though just thinking about the haven being attacked wills it into existence, the whir of a spaceship approaching fills the air. Cecily stands on instinct, one hand on her pistol and ready to run. No one else in the haven reacts to the noise, continuing their days as usual.

A moment later a ship lands in the empty space beside the haven. She wanders towards it to investigate, following a number of the haven dwellers. They seem ready to greet whoever comes out of the ship, not curious as to its sudden appearance.

She spots the haven dweller who had helped her earlier and approaches him again. “Why aren't people concerned about that?” Cecily asks, nodding towards the ship. It still had yet to open.

He looks down at her, surprise crossing his face for a second. “Right, I suppose people living in the city centers aren’t told what the Avenger looks like,” he muses. He points at the ship. “That is XCOM. Our best chance at survival.”

“Oh,” Cecily says, even as she feels her stomach drop. The man continues on to the ship with the rest of his people, leaving her alone at a distance, watching them.

The ship finally opens and a handful of people start to emerge, one of them jumping down before the ramp even touches the ground. A woman waiting at the top of the ramp shouts after him, and he only turns to offer her a thumbs up before running into the haven. The woman shakes her head and follows once the ramp comes to a stop against the ground.

Cecily backs into the haven again, finding a spot that she can continue to watch the ship from without being seen and without appearing too suspicious. She doesn’t want to believe that of all places, XCOM has come here at just the right time, but she has seen nothing to prove the man’s words wrong.

She watches as more of the crew steps off the ship, a few making dramatic shows of enjoying the dying sunlight or the earth under their boots. The flow of people slows down, and she thinks she might have an opening to do something — though she doesn’t know what.

Another group of people approaches the upper edge of the ramp, but unlike the others they stop there, where they are still technically inside the ship. Her mother stands in the middle of the group, looking just as she did when Cecily was a child — as though she hadn’t aged at all since 2015.

A smaller woman next to her steps into hug her, and while she looks awkward with it, her mother does not push her away. The woman steps back and says a few more things to her, then heads off down the ramp, hand in hand with the man from the group.

Only as the couple gets close to her hiding spot as they enter the haven does she recognize them. The woman is Aunt Lýdie, and the man Uncle Jaromír — though both look older than she’s ever seen them. Cecily slaps a hand over her mouth to prevent herself from gasping.

She watches as they pass in blissful ignorance to her. Once they’re in the haven and out of sight, she turns her attention back to the two people still on the ship. Her mother continues to speak with another, older woman. She has to do a double take, since it looks almost as though she’s speaking with an older reflection of herself.

Her mother looks different when talking with her, less like the hard cut resistance leader she’d always known her as, and more like _her_ — more like a child.

The woman, she can only assume, is her namesake — her grandmother Libuše.

In some sort of cruel joke, the ethereal had brought her to her family, just not the one she was thinking of. She desperately wants to kick it for being so fickle.

Two men approach from the shadows within the ship. She recognizes her father with ease, though he still looks older than she thinks he should. The man he’s with immediately goes to press kisses to both her mother and her grandmother’s cheeks and so he, she assumes, is grandpa Lewis.

Her grandparents descend off the ship and follow everyone else into the haven. Her parents remain at the top of the ramp, looking out over the buildings somberly. Her father loops an arm around her mother’s back so they lean together, and after a moment, they turn and disappear back into the ship. A soldier pops out from the shadows to the side and follows after them.

Cecily scrambles back to her feet and finds a safe spot out of view of the ship, out of view of the ghosts she never should have seen. Her grandparents are supposed to be dead — of that she’s sure. Her mother, her aunt, and her uncle had always spoken so highly of them, and for too long her mother couldn’t even say her full name — her voice always catching just after ‘Cecily.’

The fate of her aunt and uncle she was less sure about, but seeing them looking so _old_ did not help. She'd never thought them to be old before, and honestly, she always assumed if they found each other again they'd still look the same as the day they left.

Not as _wrong_ as seeing her mother look so young, though. She’s reminded of her father’s shock when Commander Van Doorn’s body had been dumped on the floor in front of them, pried unceremoniously from the stasis suit.

She clamps down on that train of thought before she vomits up her only good meal she’d had in weeks.

When her stomach stops revolting, when her parents' screams stop echoing in her head again, Cecily stands and starts to pace. It’s a bad idea, but she doesn’t think she’ll ever have the chance again. She will never know her grandparents, and for all she knows she has already seen her aunt and uncle for the last time. And maybe, just maybe, they can take her in as their daughter that cannot exist in this timeline.

She should leave for the safety of everyone, but she cannot help herself. She steps out of her hiding spot to go find her family.

A hand reaches out and grabs her before she can so much as take two steps. She jumps back and turns to see the same familiar looking woman from the last timeline stopping her. The ethereal vibrates almost happily in her presence, and so whoever she is, she is like her — an out of place rock causing ripples in this stream of time.

“I’m sorry,” she says quietly. “It’s better if you stay here for a moment.”

Cecily shakes her, but she cannot force her feet to move. Tears start leaking from her eyes involuntarily, and the woman steps in without hesitation to wrap her in a tight hug.

When they separate, the woman cups her face in her hands and wipes some of the tears away. “Don’t cry, it’s okay. You’re going to be alright,” she assures quietly.

Cecily shakes her head more vigorously and reaches up to push her hands off her her face. “I can’t — I need to go talk to them. I want —”

Her voice tightens up and again the woman hugs her. It’s warm and loving and it helps to ease some of the pain, but it’s like trying to bandage a gaping hole. It’ll help, but she alone will not heal her.

“I’ll help you out of the haven,” the woman assures her quietly.

“But —”

“You know ADVENT’s after you. They won’t make it if you try to introduce yourself.”

The words bite deep, but Cecily cannot deny the truth to them. Reluctantly, she nods and allows her to start leading her out of the haven, one arm slung across her shoulders. She focuses on remaining unseen just like she had so many times before, though something tells her she does not need to. The woman has an ethereal as well — one like Sally’s that worked in harmony with her. She can sense another, one that is either distant or simply weak, but either way it is not actively searching for her so she pays it no mind.

She looks up at the woman when they reach the treeline again, a memory tickling at the back of her mind just like earlier. “You’re not a doctor, are you?” she asks when she can find her voice again.

The woman looks down at her and offers her a smile. “No, but I was licensed as a paramedic, I could do a lot of things like a doctor,” she explains. “I’m Lizzie, I was one of Tanya’s friends. I assume I didn’t survive the invasion in your dimension.”

Cecily stops, still staring at her, trying to figure out just why she seemed so familiar. “No,” she says after a moment, brow furrowed deeply. “No, I think you lived. “I remember being sick one winter, and Maminka and Dad freaking out. I think you saved me. Well — a different you, but you.”

Lizzie stops to face her and smiles, something akin to relief crossing her expression. “Glad to hear not all my options are terrible,” she muses. “I’d love to tell Tanya, but…”

“Are you not supposed to interact with people outside of your own timeline?” Cecily interrupts quickly. “It feels like everyone else got a rundown on how to live with an ethereal but me.”

Lizzie reaches out and grabs her shoulders to give her a comforting squeeze. “It’s not like that, Cess,” she assures quickly. “Most of us didn’t have a choice, either. We’ve just had more time, we haven’t had to go through this ordeal you have. It’s just for the best to not massively change the course of events anywhere we go.”

Cecily nods weakly, though she doesn’t quite want to believe her words. “But then why can’t you tell Maminka about this? About alternate you?”

Lizzie’s smile falters and she hesitates for a moment to choose her words carefully. “I’m worried for her. The Tanya I know is… delicate, to say the least. I’m afraid if I tell her about you, tell her that somewhere she had a family of her own to love and adore, that might push her over the edge. I couldn’t do that to her.”

“But there has to be another one, somewhere, that would be okay. You could tell her — You could take me to her,” Cecily suggests, voice shaking.

“There might be —”

“Then let’s _go.”_ She tugs on Lizzie’s hand, but she doesn’t budge.

“You won’t find that version of your mother like this,” Lizzie says firmly. She tries and fails to conceal a frown. “Even if you did, you won’t be safe there.”

“But —”

“Go home, Cess. Your parents need you. I'll bring you back myself, if I have to."

Cecily blinks away a few stray tears then steps back out of Lizzie’s grasp. She’s right, she realizes, but she knows she cannot go home — not yet.

She focuses on the parents that she knows and her desire to go anywhere but.

“Stay safe,” she hears Lizzie say just before the world disappears.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lizzie is, once again, follyofyouth/trbl-will-find-me's.


	5. To Live and Be Well

The landing is not quite as bad as the last. Cecily’s stomach still turns at the sensation of shifting through timelines, but it's not nearly as overwhelming — no need to sit on the ground gasping for air. She still does need just a few moments to reorient, though. She’s not so sure if she wants to know how Sally made it seem so easy.

Despite the jump being easier, she is still not sure where she's landed. She reaches out with the ethereal only to find — nothing. No ethereal following her, no oppressive sense that she was horribly out of place, just silence.

Something twists in her gut, but she cannot put a finger on just what is wrong.

Still, she tries to ignore it. She has been dumped in this timeline whether she likes it or not, she may as well explore. She is still not quite sure what _here_ is, though. The only thing she had any sort of confidence in was that wherever they are, her parents here are similar to the ones she knows.

She picks a direction and starts walking.

It doesn’t take long before she runs into a pair of ADVENT troopers on patrol. She spots them before they spot her, allowing her to duck into a bush to remain unseen. Her heart pounds out of her chest, but nevertheless she reaches out with the ethereal again, just to be sure. She is met with nothing malicious still, but now she can sense another ethereal, weak and in the distance towards where the troopers are heading. There's something else odd about it, but she can't put her finger on what it is. All that really matters is that it's not one trying to hunt her down, so she pays it no mind.

Only when the troopers pass by her does she realize her mistake. They are not ADVENT troopers, but Skirmishers, given the bright colors haphazardly painted across their mismatched armor. She does not recognize either of them, but one of them mentions their headquarters as they pass by.

She lets them get a fair ways ahead of her before ducking out of cover. Cecily wills herself to be unseen and follows, more so out of curiosity than anything else. They likely would not lead her to her parents directly, but she’d never seen the main Skirmisher encampment. And with any hope, perhaps Betos could help her.

She follows in their footsteps without fear, and eventually they lead her to a small campus of once abandoned buildings now bustling with life from the Skirmishers. She stops at the edge to look around in wonder.

Skirmishers seemed to live so happily here, despite everything the world had wrought against them. She is glad that they could build some safe harbor. A thought crosses her mind, but she quickly pushes it away before it can bring her down. She wants to believe that the Skirmishers she knows and loves have a similar place in their own timeline. All the different timelines she’d been in so far have had their differences, yes, but there was nothing to indicate a larger change like this.

A Skirmisher nearly bumps into her and she only just manages to catch sight of them in time to step out of the way. She doesn’t know what might happen if someone runs into her while she is unseen, and she’s not keen on finding out while surrounded by Skirmishers. They had always been kind enough, but she’s well aware that they’re slow to trust. A human suddenly appearing would almost certainly get her shot at.

A human with an ethereal, even if the human didn’t want it herself? She doesn’t want to consider what might happen then.

She takes that as her cue to stop gawking and start wandering the base. She doubts she will find anything useful, but being surrounded by Skirmishers gives her a faint sense of normality.

She rounds the corner of one of the buildings only to be met with an oddly familiar sight —  only adding to the strange normality of the place. She recognizes Bejj with her grey armor reaching down to gently pet an equally familiar looking calico cat.

“Come. Do you not want to see Orel?” Bejj asks.

Cecily’s heart leaps into her throat, pounding loud enough that she’s sure it can be heard. There is no way Bejj could have seen her, but there is no one else for her to be speaking too.

Bejj keeps looking down at the cat, who simply meows in response to the question. “So be it,” she says after a moment, shaking her head. She turns to start walking away. The cat does not follow.

Cecily tentatively steps around the corner to follow Bejj after breathing a silent sigh of relief. Almost immediately the cat’s attention snaps to her, making her freeze. She looks at Cecily as though she knows too much and is about to spill her secrets.

After too long a moment, the cat blinks and looks away from her, seemingly uninterested. Cecily relaxes again, then starts to follow Bejj into the building.

Bejj stops halfway in the doorway to look directly at Cecily. “So, you are coming,” she says. She opens the door a bit wider and steps aside. “Come in.”

Cecily's stomach drops again, almost making her miss the small mew from behind her. She turns to see the little calico had in fact followed them. She glares at the cat, then slips through the door while she still has the chance. The cat follows just behind her as though it was following her and not Bejj.

Bejj takes the lead once more, leading them down a hallway and through a few more doors, finally stopping at one in particular. She knocks gently before opening the door.

A conversation grinds to a stop as soon as she does. Cecily leans around Bejj, but she cannot see much into the room.

“Betos, Orel,” Bejj says, nodding to each of the figures in the room in turn. “I did not mean to interrupt. I can leave, if you’d like.”

“Stay, please,” she hears Betos say.

Bejj steps inside after a second, clearing the doorway and fortunately not closing the door behind her. Cecily gratefully steps forward to take her place and almost immediately wishes she hadn’t.

Her mother sits on the floor across the room from Betos, Skirmisher armor covering her chest and shoulders and disappearing below a blanket strewn across her lap. Her hands are clasped around her dog tags, as though she were muttering prayers into them.

Cecily bites her fist to keep from gasping aloud.

The cat runs past her and eagerly hops into her mother’s lap. She circles for a moment, then lays down and begins to purr happily.

“I brought a friend as well,” Bejj adds, a hint of amusement in her voice.

A smile twitches across her mother’s face and she frees one hand to gently pet the cat. After she’s given it a few scritches, she looks up at Bejj again. “Has there been any word from…?”

The words die in her mother’s throat, but they apparently do not need to be said. Bejj shakes her head gently in answer.

The hand still holding her dog tags tightens for a moment before she releases them, letting them fall and clatter against her armor. An extra flash of light catches her eye, and Cecily does not miss the ring nestled between the tags.

The sight of it gives her a fraction of hope. It proves that her intuition was right, that this timeline is close to her own in at least one way. Her parents were together here, and if her father could be found then maybe, just maybe, she had a shot at safety. Still, seeing the ring on her tags and not her hand leaves a few thorns of worry pressing at her heart.

She tells herself that everything will work itself out in the end. It had to.

“Mox told me you were having dreams again,” Bejj says once the awkward moment passes. “It sounds as though they were different than usual.”

Her mother sighs but without as much despair to it. She looks contemplatively at the cat, still napping without a care in the world in her lap.

It is not a look she has ever seen cross her face when directly asked about anything remotely traumatic. The confidence she’d had in this timeline being similar to her own deflates slightly.

Even more surprisingly, her mother begins to speak about her dreams, about the ethereal haunting her ever step. She does not look at either of the Skirmishers in the eye as she speaks, but all the same some of the tension leaves her shoulders. They listen without interruption, and when she finishes her mother looks almost relieved. Betos offers her some soft words of support and Bejj reaches out to rest a hand on her knee.

Cecily takes a stunned step back, not quite believing what she has just seen unfold. Her mother — the one that she’d always known — had been tight-lipped about anything that had hurt her, to the point that it was a gentle joke between her parents. Seeing her open up so willingly to the Skirmishers was almost unbelievable.

Still, it filled her chest with warmth. Her mother had finally gotten some help, at least in one timeline. Either from certainly horrific trauma or simply by being around the Skirmishers, she has finally had some of the weight taken off of her mind.

The cat opens her eyes to look directly at her again, and Cecily takes that as her sign to leave. She hurries back down the corridor, leaving her mother and the Skirmishers in peace. There is no sense of the other ethereals yet — save for the weak, non-hostile one nearby — but she wants to stay ahead of them and hopefully keep the Skirmishers safe.

It hurts something deep in her chest, but she keeps moving. This version of her mother almost certainly would be able to handle the knowledge of her existence, but she cannot place the burden of that on her. She rationalizes to herself that her mother must have been taken captive and tanked at the start of the invasion, denying her own existence in this timeline and thus making it so that she will never truly be comfortable staying here.

It’s an easier truth to swallow than the thought that perhaps this version of her mother was better off as she was.

Cecily finds an out of the way place and leaves this timeline behind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bejj is on of the-grim-squeaker-8's lovely Skirmishers. <3


	6. Reality of Perception

The moment the world materializes around her again Cecily knows that something is terribly, terribly off. Her stomach churns at the taste of psionics in the air, though she has enough control to keep from vomiting. The ethereal vibrates almost eagerly at the psionics, but it does not try to take control back from her. Not yet, at least.

She gives the ethereal a nudge, but it can’t tell her anything useful. If there are any other ethereals nearby then the sheer amount of psionics in the area hides their presence. It’s a double edged sword; on one hand it will make herself harder to find, but on the other her pursuers can easily sneak up on her.

Still, she supposes she is safe for the moment, enough to explore at least. If she remembers anything from travelling around as a child it was that such a concentration of psionics was only possible in a few locations.

She closes her eyes to try and sense where the source of it was, then turns and starts hiking again.

It does not take her long to find the Templar base. For as secretive as the Templars could be, following the thrum of psionics made their base easy to find. And, if she looks around, she is fairly certain it looks to be in the same rough place as the Templar base she knows.

Cecily stays close to the edges, actually trying to keep hidden for once. She could use her own psionics to hide, but she wasn’t sure how easily anyone more versed in psionics could see through her facade. It was best to just not risk it.

Briefly, she wonders if she could sneak into one of the hot springs — psionics helping to mask her presence or not. It’s far from the smartest idea, but she deserves some time to relax after everything she’s been through.

She doesn’t get far around the base when chattering breaks her from her thoughts. She has just enough time to dive back into the treeline before she’s seen.

Geist walks by her hiding spot, talking exuberantly about his two most trusted followers. She doesn’t hear the rest of what he says as following just a step behind him is her father — looking too old and too tired once again.

Her heart becomes leaden in her chest.

Cecily doesn’t let it deter her and instead she follows after them, careful not to make a single noise as she does. Her focus on staying hidden means she can’t listen to a single word Geist says, despite him talking loud enough for the entire base to hear.

He leads them the rest of the way around to the hot spring. The sight she finds there makes the world disappear from under her even without hopping into a new timeline.

Billiam — or Will, as Sally had called him — sits on the edge of the pool, legs crossed so that he’s not touching the water. Across from him sits her mother, the pants of her Templar uniform pulled up so that her feet can dangle in the water freely. The two look up as Geist and her father approach. From her vantage point she can’t quite make out the expressions on their faces, but she does she her mother raise a beer bottle in greeting.

“Tanya and Billiam are far better strategists than I,” Geist says, turning towards her father and gesturing at the two of them. “Either of them is far better suited to helping you, supposing you’re willing to help us in return.”

“Let’s focus on the present for now. The Elders are enough to deal with,” her father retorts.

“Of course, of course,” Geist says. “Regardless, Bill, Tanya, this is John, XCOM’s former central offi—”

“XCOM?” Bill interrupts quickly. Both he and her mother visibly tense, and the psionics in the air become so sharp she thinks she could cut herself just by breathing. Even Geist reacts to the the change in atmosphere, visibly tensing. Her father is the only one that remains ignorant to the change, and she doesn’t know if she pities him for it or if she’s jealous.

“I can explain anything you want,” her father ties to assure.

“We aren’t going to work with XCOM,” her mother practically growls. She has an accent again, one thicker than she’s heard it in any of the other timelines.

Geist starts to try and reason with them, but she is in too much shock to hear whatever it is he says.

Cecily stumbles back into the debris of another building too destroyed to save, her steps staggered and uneven like the earth itself is shifting under her feet. If she makes any noises, she doesn’t care — she just wants to get away from the Templars as quickly as possible.

She turns — and nearly walks directly into someone’s chest. A pair of hands grab her shoulders, either to keep her from falling over and instantly alerting everyone to their location or to simply try and stop her from running away.

She steadies herself and looks up to see Bill, though not dressed in his Templar getup as she's used to. She looks over her shoulder towards the pool just to be sure that she wasn’t imagining things, but it is already far out of sight. “Bill?” she asks incredulously. “What? How are…?” She stops to shake her head, as though chiding herself for her shock. “No, who _doesn’t_ have an ethereal at this point? I should know better.”

“You learn quick,” he says. The lack of Australian accent catches her off guard. He takes the surprise as an opening to let one hand drop from her shoulder and turns to start leading her away from the base. “Let’s go somewhere where we won’t alert every Templar in the base. And Will, please.”

Cecily follows him without hesitation, both eager to get away from the terrifyingly wrong version of her mother and her head still spinning too much at the knowledge that she even exists. She never voiced it, but it was always obvious to her that the Templars made her uneasy. The mother she knew would never have joined them willingly.

Will drops his other hand from her shoulder once they’re far enough away, far enough that the ambient psionics in the air is more akin the the rustling of leaves on a windy day than an overbearing, deafening presence.

“You’re just going to tell me to go home, like everyone else, aren’t you?” Cecily asks, looking up at him.

“Yes,” he says flatly. “Apparently whatever Sally and Lizzie told you wasn’t convincing enough.”

Cecily crosses her arms over her chest and tries to stand up taller. In comparison to Will’s height, it makes no difference. “I don’t want to go back,” she says firmly.

Will frowns at her. “You have to.”

She pauses for a moment, just long enough for her brief mask of confidence to crack. “I can’t,” she says, voice wavering as she fights back tears. “I don’t have anywhere to go there, and I can’t save them, and I can’t — I just can’t.”

Will rests a hand on her shoulder again, apparently trying to be comforting. It doesn’t do much other than prompt a few stray tears from her eyes, though.

“Cecily,” he says, quiet but firm. “You have to go back. Jumping from one dimension to the next is going to cause a lot more damage than you realize. If you keep this up, you will inevitably run into things far worse than you could ever imagine, and Tanya would kill me if I let that happen to you.”

“What does it matter — Lizzie already said she can’t mention me to her!” Her voice cracks and she takes a few steps back out of Will’s grip. Tears start sliding down her cheeks, but she ignores them. “I just want somewhere else I can go, somewhere else I exist.”

“It won’t work out like you want, so please, go home before you get hurt.”

Cecily shakes her head, neither willing nor able to believe Will’s words. He reaches out towards her, but she makes the jump before he can do or say anything else.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Weir is inbatcountry17's. <3


	7. Borne Calm and Restless

Just as she did in her original escape, she lands in a secluded alleyway. Cecily only stands long enough to ensure that no one else was around before allowing herself to devolve into tears once more. Fortunately the sobs pass quickly and she is able to wipe her remaining tears away with the sleeve of her coat before pushing herself up again.

The buildings around her are obviously of human origin, jutting out at odd angles and painted in bright colors — so unlike the impersonal uniformity of ADVENT cities. A part of her hopes that this is the same timeline she visited first, the one where Earth had been spared completely. It's unlikely, she realizes, but given everything else that she’s seen happen, she doesn’t discount it entirely.

She makes her way out of the alley and down the street, trying to find the nearest major intersection to find a newspaper, a street sign, _anything_ to tell her where she is. Instead, she first runs into an open space overlooking a bay with a great red bridge spanning across it. She stares at it for a moment in shock, blending in perfectly with the gaggle of tourists taking pictures around her.

The Golden Gate Bridge doesn’t look as nice in person as it did in her Uncle’s postcards, she thinks.

The view is still pretty, though, so she lingers for a little while. It’s not something she’s seen before, and she doubts it’ll be something she ever sees again. Even if she can stay in this timeline, she knows her parents have only ever lived on the east coast.

Eventually she must move on. Whether she likes it or not, she is still behind hunted down across timelines, and if she is to have any hope at being safe she has to find her parents.

She reaches out with the ethereal only to find what she expected: nothing useful. No sense of any other ethereals, good or bad. She does get a sense of _something,_ though, like her mouth has suddenly filled with copper.

It doesn’t fill her with hope, but Cecily turns away from the bridge regardless. She only has one lead to follow out here dumped in San Francisco — and she doesn’t even know what her Uncle looks like.

Cecily takes off, meandering through the streets without any direction. She can’t do much but wander, lacking money to buy anything despite how good everything looks. Walking away from Ghirardelli Square hurts, but she’s sworn not to steal anything more.

She steps into a restaurant after a while, just trying to escape the ocean breeze and chill for a little bit. All she knows is she is lost in San Francisco with nowhere to go, no clues to follow, and no way of finding any of her family.

Cecily rubs her hands over her face, trying to decide if she should just try and move on to the next timeline. She doesn’t like the idea of giving up when safety could be so close, but she is is running out of options here.

The chatter in the restaurant dies down just enough for her to hear the TV halfway across the room. She doesn’t pay it much attention at first, not until she hears the words ‘alien attack.’ She snaps her attention up to it and stares at it, transfixed.

“The only remaining evidence at the scene were a few faint blood spatters. Some are calling it a conspiracy, others, the end of the world. Local officials declined to make a statement. We attempted to reach out to General Van Doorn, the supposed leader of the XCOM project, but we were unable to get ahold of him,” the news anchor says before segueing into a new topic.

Cecily runs out of the restaurant before the program can continue, regardless. Wherever she was — _whenever_ she was, it was the closest to her own timeline she’d seen yet. Maybe, just maybe, she has finally found the one other place she can exist without fear.

She pushes her way past the crowds of people in the street, trying to find a safe and secluded spot that she could try and jump from. She knows exactly where her mother is heading, and surely it was easier to simply jump through space instead of both space and time. All she had to do was get to Pilsen before the aliens bombed it.

A group of people getting off of a train slows her down temporarily as she is forced to weave through them. She almost brushes past two women stepping off onto the sidewalk until her mind catches up and she does a double take.

Her mother stands hand in hand with another woman whom she has never seen before. The two look at each other with nothing short of adoration in their eyes, and if it wasn’t so unexpected it would be heartwarming. The smaller woman leans up to press a kiss to her mother’s lips before they take off in opposite directions.

Cecily does not miss the gleam of a ring on her finger.

She stands for a few moments, stunned, then backs away and wills herself to be unseen once more. Her mother was happy, yes, but this was not a place that she could be. This timeline wasn’t the closest to her own — it was more like the universe had taken everything she’d known and placed it on its head. She is not eager to see what other surprises it holds.

She turns and starts running again, still looking for the nearest secluded place. She would never find safety in this timeline, no matter how close it looked to her own on the surface.

Cecily ducks around a corner, and as easily as stepping through a doorway she’s gone again.

The world materializes again and she finds herself at the edge of a mutated forest, like those she’d grown up traipsing through. It fills her with a small amount of reassurance, but it flickers out quickly, like a candle flame in a storm. She does not need the ethereal to sense that there is something horrifically _wrong_ about the timeline she has ended up in. Simply existing here is enough to leave her gasping and her head spinning.

Even so, sensing the world around her comes with such ease that she does not think to stop to consider that maybe she and the ethereal are finally becoming one being, like Sally and Lizzie and Will.

She finds her feet beneath her and pushes onwards nonetheless, doing her best to leave the gross feeling behind. Logically, she knows she should just jump again immediately, find a timeline that doesn’t make her sick just by existing — but she’s _curious._

It doesn’t take her long before she runs into a small Reaper camp. Her relationship with the Reapers has always been tenuous at best, but they’re still a welcome sight considering the alternatives.

She hangs around the edge of the camp unseen, listening in on the conversation between the handful of Reapers around the fire. They don’t talk about much that’s of any use to her, but she at least learns that they are on a reconnaissance mission and waiting for their fellow Reaper to return. In all likelihood, they would not be heading back to their base for a while longer, leaving her without any direction to go.

Cecily sighs and silently turns to walk away from the fire. These Reapers wouldn’t be of any help to her, and honestly, she’s a bit relieved. They’re good at what they do, but she didn’t particularly want to work with them.

She does not make it far before all hell breaks loose.

A gunshot echoes in the distance, loud and alien sounding, drawing her and all the Reapers’ attentions up. A heartbeat later, one of the Reapers screams a horrific noise — gurgling and cut short as he falls over dead. Blood seeps from a single, well placed bullet hole in his forehead.

Cecily’s stomach drops at the sight of it and she looks away before she vomits. Even then, she has to work to keep her stomach down.

The remaining two Reapers grab their rifles and jump to their feet, but they can only look around in fear as they try to figure out where the shot had come from.

Cecily spots the slight movement of unnatural color in the trees across from them at the far side of camp before either of them. She doesn’t think twice about dashing back into the camp and tackling one Reaper to the ground. A bullet whizzes past where their head was a split second later.

“What the _fuck,”_ they gasp. They writhe around to look at her, more confusion settling into their expression. _“What the fuck?”_

“We don’t have time —” the third Reaper starts. She looks down at her friend and only just sees Cecily for the first time. She jumps back in surprise and nearly drops her rifle in doing so. “What —”

A gunshot cuts her off. Red blossoms on her chest before anyone can so much as twitch, and a heartbeat later she falls to the ground as though knocked over by the breeze.

Cecily jumps to her feet again and goes over to her, but there’s nothing she can do. The Reaper is dead.

“Listen, girl,” the last Reaper says, standing to his feet again but trying to stay in cover. “I don’t know who you are or where the hell you came from — or how you fucking snuck up on our camp, but you gotta go. Leave this to me.”

Cecily glances down at the other two Reapers, then back up at them, shaking her head. “You don’t think you have a chance, do you?” she asks weakly.

The Reaper offers her a frown and a sorrowful look. “No, but it’s after us, not — not whatever you are,” they say. “So go!”

She stands, but she cannot force her feet to move. She is stuck, bound to the bloodied earth.

“Go!” the Reaper shouts again. They ready their rifle, then move forwards to take a shot. If it hits anything living in the woods, neither of them can tell.

The noise releases Cecily from her stupor, allowing her to move once more. Trying to move through the camp feels like molasses, though, like time has been slowed to nearly a stop. It’s the smart thing to do, running, but it’s not _right._

She hears another gunshot, one distinctly unlike the Vektor rifles the Reapers held so dear. Cecily takes a chance and glances over her shoulder just in time to see the last Reaper fall to the ground to join their friends.

The _thing_ in the woods finally emerges to examine the carnage, and once again Cecily’s feet become leaden. She knows the Chosen exist in her own timeline, but she’d never seen one herself. From the stories the factions told, she had no desire to.

The Hunter approaches the camp, slinging a rifle across their back.

Cecily tries to force herself to move again, but she _can’t._ The Hunter locks eyes with her.

She knows her mother’s face anywhere.

She doesn’t want to believe it, she _can’t_ believe it, but she has all the evidence she needs right in front of her. Her mother and the Hunter had been bent together to create a nightmare version of the person she loves.

If her mother became _this,_ she doesn’t want to think about how it might have happened — what might have become of her father. Fortunately, she doesn’t have the time to.

Cecily finds the strength to move again just as the Hunter reaches for her pistol. The bullet whizzes past her as all the rumors about the Hunter never missing repeat endlessly in her head.

The Hunter takes aim again, but the ethereal forces her to push, to try and do _anything_ to survive other than simply run. A blast of psionic energy erupts from her hand, hitting the Hunter square in the chest. It doesn’t do much to deter her, but it does knock her slightly off balance.

She takes the opening to turn back into the woods and run as fast as she can. She doesn’t know if the Hunter is pursuing her — she doesn’t _want_ to know, so she doesn't dare look back. She has no time to be picky about where she goes next, so Cecily simply pushes and jumps to whatever timeline the ethereal wishes to go. She is certain nothing can be as horrific as the world falls away around her.


	8. Night by Night and Day by Day

The difference between timelines is palpable. She doesn’t feel as though she’s about to vomit when the world rematerializes, she doesn’t feel like blood is filling her mouth, she doesn’t feel like death itself stalks this world. Something is still terribly _off,_ but compared to the last timeline it feels more comfortable, more like home.

Cecily collapses to the ground and lets out a scream, high pitched and wailing and closer to a dying animal than a human. She covers her face with her arms and sobs again, unable to help herself. Maybe Will had a point about not continuing to hop recklessly through timelines.

When she finally feels able to gather herself once again, either moments or minutes later, she stands and wipes the tears from from her eyes. A heavy emptiness weighs her heart down, but she must continue. Somewhere there had to be another timeline that she was born, another timeline that she could take refuge in.

A thought nags at the back of her mind, but she pushes it away. Denial has gotten her this far.

She looks around to an empty plains with only the occasional scraggly tree breaking the landscape around her. Eventually, in the distance, she sees a few shoddy looking buildings. She picks herself up and goes off to inspect the haven. If nothing else, it is at least a place to rest while she recovers.

She slips into the haven unseen with ease, though she’s not quite sure if she needed psionics to do that much. The haven bustles with motion unlike any other she’s seen. More surprisingly, the people seem happy — almost hopeful about their future.

Their happiness does not mix well with the unease in her chest. Nevertheless, Cecily explores the haven, following the flow of people to the opposite end where the sprawl of buildings is cut short by a ravine.

She peers down into it to see the same alien ship she’d seen in the other timeline — the Avenger. People move in and out of it and sit in its shade without second thought, like it was just part of the landscape.

A little distance away from the ship she sees a familiar figure lying in the shade of a tree. Her gut twists painfully and she refuses to acknowledge it in hopes that she is wrong.

She steels herself and finds a spot to climb down to the base of the ravine. The pain in her gut worsens with every step down and she fights the temptation to leave for the next timeline immediately. Her curiosity has been piqued, and she cannot ignore it now, however difficult each step forward may be.

She creeps over to the tree, and she is not sure if what she finds there is better or worse than the last timeline.

Her father lays passed out beside some freshly overturned earth. A small collection of empty bottles decorate the area around the base of the tree. Fear begins to sink its thorny tendrils into her heart in earnest. Her father becomes a drunk more often than not, she knows, but not once had she seen him this bad. She is afraid to learn the cause of it.

She has no other choice, though. She carefully steps around his body so she can get a closer look at a rock placed too conspicuously a few feet from him.

It tells her too much with too few words.

_Tatiana Mercier,_ it reads. _1973 - 2015_

She stands transfixed, staring at the gravestone, trembling with tears that she refuses to release. Her father may be passed out too drunk to notice her, but she is sure that no amount of psionics could mask her wailing from the rest of the haven.

A few tears escape roll down her cheeks, despite her best efforts.

She doesn’t know how long she stands there, mourning for both her parents — the ones she never had and the ones that never will be.

She mourns long enough for something to approach her from behind. She feels their gaze burning into her back even though no one should be able to see her — not with the powers the ethereal had given her and she was finally learning to wield properly. She tenses and reaches out psionically.

The presence is not like that of the ethereals that have been chasing her down since her escape — angry and powerful and godly. Nor is it like that of Sally or Lizzie or Will — confident in their own abilities but still so touchingly human. There is something about the being behind her — something unknowable, something not quite mortal but not quite godly. Something on the verge of realizing its own power.

She turns around to see her mother standing behind her, waiting patiently for her turn to mourn.

Cecily looks down at the gravestone again just to be sure that her eyes weren’t deceiving her.

“I know,” her mother says quietly as she looks up again. “It surprised me too.”

“What happened?” she asks, her voice already creaking. Tears well behind her eyes again, but she does what she can to appear strong — if only for the moment. She knows it will not last long.

Her mother steps in close to her and lays a hand that isn’t quite there on her back. Her gaze falls to her father, passed out and completely unaware of their presence, likely for the best. “The Elders are… imperfect, though something tells me you already know that,” she says gently. “They thought I was strong enough to be what they wanted, but…”

She trails off. The rest does not need to be said.

Cecily stares at her for a few long moments, then lets her gaze fall back down to her father and the grave. Her legs go weak underneath her and she sinks to the ground in silence. Hearing her mother’s Czech again is like a warm blanket, but it is not enough to balance out their situation.

Her mother follows suit, sitting down beside her. She makes herself comfortable in a spot where she can reach both her and her father in case she needs to comfort either of them.

“Is it always like this?” she asks once she’s found her voice again. The suffering of her parents never ends, and the proof of it is right in front of her. 

Her mother looks away. “I can’t say,” she says quietly. “I only know what I’ve seen, and I’ve only been here. It’s certainly a risk. I’m only human, after all.”

The answer is not for the question she asked, but it still answers it all too eerily well. Cecily pauses, struggling with all of her thoughts. “I just — You suffer. A lot. I don’t want _this_ ,” she gestures at her and at her father, “to be what’s waiting for me. I want us to be happy. Nearly anywhere I went, you and Dad weren’t. You weren’t even _together_ a lot of the time.”

“A lot of coincidence led to me being appointed to XCOM, to being _here._ Without that coincidence, without XCOM, I wouldn’t have met John. Maybe some of that same coincidence also means this doesn’t happen in your timeline. Maybe by coincidence you are all happy.”

She bites back a retort that _no,_ she’d seen plenty of timelines now where they’d met without the influence of XCOM. Coincidence would bring them together at different times, but the suffering seemed like a constant. Luck had killed her mother here, and maybe luck would spare her and her father in her timeline, but that would not save them from more pain. “Why does coincidence always lead to something bad, though?” she says slowly. She lets her gaze fall back down to the dirt, careful to ensure that she is not looking at her father. “I just thought there’d be some place that you guys were happy. Somewhere that I didn’t grow up on the run.”

Her mother frowns and lays a not-quite-there hand on her knee. The chill that accompanies it is oddly comforting. “There might still be, you don’t know,” she offers.

“Maybe,” Cecily agrees reluctantly. “It doesn’t feel like it, though. Something always happens, you and Dad don’t meet until it’s too late, or you always get —” Her voice catches in her throat at the memory of the underwater prison, of the body of Van Doorn, of the _screaming_ and the sudden silence. She swallows before continuing. “I just thought I’d exist in more than one timeline, but I guess I’m the exception and not the rule.”

Her mother is quiet for a few long moments. “I’m sorry,” she says at last.

Tears well behind Cecily’s eyes again. She shakes her head to hide the fact. Once she pulls herself back together again she looks up, though she is certain her mother can see the gaping cracks in her mask. “I should stay here, I guess,” she says quietly after a few long moments.

“You should go home.”

“But what about Dad?” she asks. Her gaze falls down to his unconscious form, still half splayed out over the loose earth of the grave. Her heart twists painfully just looking at him, but looking at her mother isn’t much better. She’s tempted to pull his sweater out of her bag, just for comfort, but she holds off for the moment. “Someone has to look after him — I can’t just leave him alone like this.”

"No."

Cecily shakes her head weakly, tears once again prickling behind her eyes. "But —"

“It’s not your job to look after him, and he’s not alone," he mother assures sternly, like the commander she'd come to know her as. "I promised him as much. I told him I’d stay at his side, no matter if I were dead or alive. I wouldn’t — I _couldn’t_ abandon him now." Her voice tightens with the pain of something rooted deep in her past as she speaks.

The sound makes guilt gnaw at her chest. Even if she hadn’t intended to, she’d abandoned her parents — her actual parents, still trapped in stasis deep underwater. Even just thinking about them makes her stomach twist, but she knows she cannot ignore it forever. She cannot leave them there to rot.

Certainly not when the Elders had given her the best way to save them. She hopes that her ethereal is the only mistake the Elders of her timeline had made.

“You’re right,” Cecily agrees at last, voice barely more than a whisper. She pushes herself unsteadily back to her feet, then crosses her arms over her chest like she is still unsure. “I should go home. I just — I want to see one last thing. I need to know that it’s possible — that this isn’t —”

Her mother offers her a sad smile as she stands and reaches out to brush her arm again. “I trust you to do what’s right,” she says softly. “I know you will.”

Tears burn behind Cecily’s eyes again.

“Mám tě ráda,” her mother says.

A few of the tears squeeze out of her eyes. “Love you too,” she replies, voice tight. She spares a brief look at her father, still passed out and unaware. “And Dad. Tell him, when he wakes?”

“I will, when he can handle it,” her mother assures.

Cecily forces a smile on her face and nods. She jumps to the next timeline before her mother can see her burst into tears.

She sobs in the middle of the woods until she has no more tears left to give. She does not bother trying to mask her presence. A this point, she does not care if anything or anyone comes to try and take her, she is certain she can escape in time.

But she is fifteen and she has lost her parents too many times over, and she _needs_ to cry.

When she is finally able to pull herself together again she does not care if minutes or hours have passed. Some unbearable weight that she has been carrying has finally been lifted from her chest and she feels _free._ It will return, she’s sure, or it will be replaced with something equally terrible with what she knows she must do — but for the moment she can breathe.

She picks herself up out of the dirt and heads off. She cannot verbalize just why she knows the direction her parents will be in, but she does. Again she senses that same presence she’d felt in the last timeline when she reaches out, the sense of a being just on the verge of godhood, and figures it probably has something to do with that.

She comes across a small shack, wedged between a lake and the woods — the meeting point where land gives way to water and sky.

Her attention is drawn to the other ethereal first, to her mother up in the branches of a tree at the treeline. She keeps looking up from a pad of paper in her lap and up at the landscape and back down again, drawing, most likely. She doesn’t look happy or sad — just content. It is, perhaps, the best any of them can ask for given what has happened, given her other options.

Her father, on the other hand, works at something on the side of the house. Everything about him speaks of joy and relief. Cecily’s heart soars with the knowledge.

They are alone, just the three of them. There is no one to stop her if she steps out of the brush to introduce herself, no one to interrupt.

Cecily wants to, desperately. She does not move.

Sally’s warning of her parents that are not truly hers rings in her head, as does Lizzie’s reminder of just how fragile her mother is. She has already meddled with time enough to learn her lesson, but Will’s warning still scares her.

To cry in their arms would be a relief, but it isn’t right. They are not her parents, and she is not their child, and this is not her timeline. Interacting with them will just cause more pain and suffering for them all, and she could not do that to them. Her not-parents had surely suffered enough to get here — somewhere they were happy despite the aliens, despite not having a child.

That was all she needed to know, and she would not destroy that.

Besides, she has a duty to her actual parents — the ones still trapped in a doomed timeline with no hope, undergoing unimaginable suffering deep under the sea. She would not abandon them now, not when she was the only person that could save them and the rest of the world.

Ripping her still-beating heart from her chest would surely be less painful, but Cecily turns and leaves her not-quite-parents regardless. She is only fifteen and armed with naught but her father’s knife, her mother’s pistol, and their combined strength of will, but that alone is enough to make her ADVENT’s most wanted no matter where she goes. The ethereal residing in her head certainly helps, but it is second to her lineage. It is a tool — an ally, perhaps — that will let her right all the things that the Elders have wronged, to bring some small amount of happiness back to the lives of those she cares about.

She focuses on her home and hops timelines one last time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Orbis Non Sufficit - The World Does Not Suffice


End file.
